After that they’d met at least twice a week for over three months, but always in secret. There was a good reason for that. At the time Annie had just turned sixteen and he was fourteen years older. Her dad found out about it after someone saw her going into Daniel’s house while his parents were away.

Her father, a devout Catholic, hit the roof. He confronted Daniel and accused him of being a paedophile even though Annie had just reached the age of consent.

Daniel agreed not to see her again, and to make it easier on himself he moved from Kirkby Abbey to Keswick. Annie went into a massive teenage sulk for weeks. On the day her father died, she had been staying at Janet Dyer’s house, bemoaning the fact that he had ruined her life.

Of course, it wasn’t long before she realised that he’d been right to step in and save her from herself. It turned out that Daniel had had a number of girls on the go at the time, and three years later he was convicted of having sex with a minor and jailed for two years. On his release, he’d moved back to Keswick but he did return occasionally to visit his widowed father in Kirkby Abbey. Daniel had never married and at almost fifty he was still single.

Annie knew all this because his father Ron was one of the elderly people who Janet visited on a regular basis as a carer. And, of course, there was no way she could resist passing on what she knew to her long-time friend.

Annie still thought about Daniel from time to time but had long ago come to the conclusion that he hadn’t loved her, even though he’d made her believe that he had. She would never forget what her father said to her when he entered her room and found her crying after the break-up: ‘You need to pull yourself together and grow up, Annie. It’s time you faced up to the fact that you were being groomed by that pervert. To him, you were no more than a sex object.’

Annie had told James as much as she’d dared about that phase of her life, leaving out only one important detail that she didn’t want him to know, something she hoped she would never have to reveal it to him. A secret she’d kept for almost twenty years.

James had never come face to face with Daniel Curtis, and she was thankful that the man was now living a hundred or so miles away.

Annie managed to get quite a few chores done before James called.

‘I’m just leaving the church,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it when we meet up. Let’s say, in an hour, at The White Hart. I’ve got a few things I need to do first.’

‘So you’re going to keep me in suspense until then?’ Annie replied.

‘It’s not long for you to wait, and it means I can crack on.’